CRM- September 2008 - (Page 16) commodity managers can quickly assess gate customer records such as accounts, the viability of a supplier, all from the contacts, and opportunities; initiate phone iPhone, according to Oracle. The Indica- calls and emails from within Salesforce tors application can be downloaded free CRM; and query the Salesforce CRM apof charge for users with either an existing plication for desired customer informaOBIEE license for on-premises use or an tion, which is then sent to their iPhone. Salesforce Mobile for iPhone will also existing subscription for on-demand use. Indicators is the first in a series of ap- enable new and existing native Force.com plications Oracle promises to deliver to applications—the company boasts there the iPhone platform, including CRM are currently more than 72,000 such applications, says Lenley Hensarling, applications—to be quickly revamped for use on the iPhone. group vice president of While iPhone functionality Oracle Application Devel- Vendors are targeting will be useful to any traveling opment. These will include the user most likely or remote worker, both Oracle a mobile sales assistant, a set and Salesforce.com are targetof sales productivity apps, to be mobile—the ing the user most likely to be and the recently announced salesperson—and mobile—the salesperson—and Sales Prospector, though emphasizing emphasizing sales visibility. no prices or dates had “Getting a foot in the door”— been set at press time. sales visibility. the traditional trope of the Not to be left behind, Salesforce.com announced that its Sales- door-to-door salesman—also applies to force CRM applications and the com- the rapidity of deployment and the nopany’s Force.com platform are available cost approach. This is especially the case on Apple’s App Store as Salesforce Mo- with Oracle Business Indicators, which, bile for iPhone. As with Oracle’s an- Hensarling says, “is information-only”— nouncement, existing Salesforce Unlim- that is, a read-only application; actual user ited Edition customers can download interactivity will come with the planned subsequent releases. Where it may lead is Salesforce Mobile for free. Salesforce Mobile for iPhone integrates unclear, he adds. “This is a new distribuwith the iPhone’s native functions such as tion model for us, and new territory.” The iPhone is actually familiar territory email and maps, allowing users to navi- for some CRM vendors, notably NetSuite, which has offered its users full access via the iPhone’s Safari Web browser since the massively popular handheld was launched in June 2007. Through the iPhone’s browser, NetSuite offers users the ability to do more than merely access existing information, as this first round of iPhone apps seems limited to; users of NetSuite’s SuitePhone interface can create new orders, new contacts, and new opportunities, and can also access all product pricing and customer information. (A NetSuite spokesperson confirms that the vendor did not have an iPhone-native application available for download as of the App Store July launch date, but offers no indication about whether the company intends to build one in the future.) As the demand among iPhone-using CRM professionals heats up, the competition among CRM vendors to accommodate that demand will surely lead to further application development. Mobile users may benefit from the added value—assuming the iPhone-native apps are robust enough to provide some—but whether those applications can add revenue for the vendors—or whether they'll remain free downloads for existing customers—remains an unanswered question. —Marshall Lager CRM on In honor of our seventh annual CRM Market Awards—which include a new category for opensource CRM (see page 44)—we decided to see what the Twitterverse had to say. Want to follow CRM magazine on Twitter? You can find us at www.twitter.com/destinationCRM. You can tweet us directly by using @destinationCRM at the start of your message, and you can see who twittered about our August conference—destinationCRM 2008—by searching for the #dCRM08 tag. matthewtift: Checkin’ out mpoweropen.com. Can’t decide what to think of an open source, .NET CRM for nonprofits. cmespinoza: I’m curious how open source Sugar CRM squares up against Microsoft CRM, features-wise. epstudios: does anyone know a simple CRM tool that is preferably open source? I mean simple so your grandma can figure out how to use it to email you. schaapy: trying to use Sugar CRM to help manage the ever complexity of things but this software isn’t simple. GundyGroup: Looking into an open source CRM. Either sugar or vtiger. ahallock: I’m dying here. Anyone have a CRM recommendation? I tried some open source solutions, but they’re complete jank. rossbrown: Anybody know any good free open source, web-based CRM software? Or do I have to write my own! 16 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | SEPTEMBER 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://Force.com http://Salesforce.com http://Salesforce.com http://Force.com http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://mpoweropen.com http://www.destinationCRM.com
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